Diego Corona (MPhil)

Early Clubroot Identification, University of Manchester

Biography

Diego Corona is a MPhil student within the e-Agri Sensors Centre at the University of Manchester. He is working on a project that involves early detection of club roots under the supervision on Professor Bruce Grieve. He hopes to learn the technology and apply it in Mexican agriculture thereby helping his country to flourish in agriculture.

Research

His research topic is “early detection of club roots using electrical impedance methods”. Club root is a fungal infection of the roots of the brassicas such as, cabbage, turnips, etc. Club root affects the roots of the plants where the roots get distorted and swollen limiting its growth. The disease is spreading fast throughout the world and causing massive commercial losses to agricultural communities.

Currently the project focuses on getting a subsoil image of the plant and to try and identify the difference between a healthy and an infected plant. The existing technology is to take x-ray images of the roots. This technology is fairly accurate however, is very expensive and is out of reach for most of farmer. Thus the idea is to build a technology that is relatively cheap. Thereby allowing all the dominions of the farming community to tap into this technology and detect/eliminate club roots at an earlier stage.